family produces its own crop of rice, and the method used is shifting cultivation, a method that has been much condemned. This agricultural system is bound with religious rituals and beliefs, and each family has its strain of sacred rice that is believed to have a soul and a personality of its own, a belief that permeates the agricultural practice of the Iban (Freeman, 1955, 28).
The Iban also show shifting cultivation and settlement patterns. The practice of shifting cultivation means that each family unit requires an extensive area of land for its subsistence, and it is usual for the Iban to cultivate half or more of a farm for two years in succession, with a proportion of new forest felled each year. This is the common method in virgin jungle, while in secondary jungle it is normal for the whole of the farmed land to be abandoned after one crop is taken. When land is abandoned for secondary growth, it is left alone as long as possible, often for a period of 15 years or more. The dampa system has developed because of the dispersal of bilek famil
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